The mindset required to execute daily ecocide is similar to that required to enable daily genocide. In this clip, Hannah Arendt explains how an unhindered stream of misinformation will eventually break our ability to distinguish between true or false, fact or fiction. We have rich and powerful people in control of our mainstream media and education, and we are entrenched in an ecocidal civilisation that is perpetuated by the delusional belief that this arrangement is both ‘safe’ and ‘peaceful’. In the WEIRD countries (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Developed) our educational institutions have successfully maintained and reinforced this illusion for decades with ease.
In this clip about Eichmann, Hannah Arendt asks ‘How does society produce men for whom obedience replaces conscience?’ She explains that this requires bureaucracy, language rules, and the relief of personal judgement. These are never far away, she rightly observes. Later in this article I define the dominant ecocidal business-as-usual behaviours that are reflected in every political party in our democracies. This renders us almost incapable of steering into a wiser path.
Fortunately, Hannah Arendt explains that the way out of this trap is plurality, where we work together in all our diversity to navigate a wiser way forward. There are already wiser behaviour patterns that are attempting to overthrow the dominant patterns. This article documents my observations, and points to some key players within this paradigm shift who are helping others to see the reality of the accelerating collapse of Earth’s ecosystems that we are causing and encouraging everyone to start to challenge the dominant paradigms.
The Reality of Accelerating Ecosystems Collapse
The climate breakdown is just one symptom of the wider ecosystems collapse. There are quite a few people who see the world in a rapidly escalating ecosystems collapse. George Tsakraklides a very vocal example. In his book, ‘The Biology of Collapse’, he reinterprets political and economic failure as the predictable biological outcome of endless growth and systemic overshoot. Acharya Prashant is another example of brutal honesty in the face of man-made ecosystems collapse.
We have caused chronic global ecological overshoot for more than fifty years. We shall not become genuinely sustainable over the long term until this global ecological debt is repaid. Until that time, the phrase ‘becoming more sustainable’ is a means to greenwash our ecocidal business-as-usual behaviours. ‘More sustainable’ is an oxymoron that is best avoided. A strategic plan to shrink the global economy and population size fairly and voluntarily offers the fastest path to achieving global sustainability. We would be wise to rename and reframe the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals as Sustainable Degrowth Goals.
The Gaia Hypothesis
The Gaia Hypothesis offered by James Lovelock, suggests that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings to form a single, self-regulating, complex system. In his book ‘Healing Gaia’ he suggests that we cannot actually ‘heal’ or save Gaia because the planet is a self-regulating super-organism that will heal itself, potentially by eliminating or drastically reducing the human population. Neverthless, we are currently harming Gaia on a massive scale; therefore it is reasonable to conclude that changing our behaviour profoundly could begin a healing process.
Nowadays, humans coupled with their technology and affluence make up an increasingly self-harming section of Gaia’s self-regulating mechanism. We are enthusiastically persisting with necrocapitalism; this drives both anthropogenic climate change and the Sixth Mass Extinction. As Lovelock observes, we are not exempt from the unfolding mass extinction event.
We have a lot of ingenuity and technology especially in the field of contraceptive healthcare that we could deploy to peacefully and voluntarily begin the process of self-regulation. Our most difficult challenges involve overcoming the pronatalist mindset and the economic algorithms that fuel the coercive consumerism that drives our ecocidal growth economics and the exponentially expanding inequality in health and wealth and power.
To Heal Gaia we must first Heal Ourselves
We are very sick with misinformation right now. Evidence of our sickness can be seen in our daily ecocidal behaviour and the numerous genocides that are underway. Both of these tragic outcomes arise directly from our dependence and obedience to business-as-usual.
Business-as-usual — six dominant ecocidal behaviour themes
There are six dominant ecocidal behaviour patterns that define the dominant model of ‘business-as-usual’. These are:
- Colonialism and oppression — this destroys diversity and inhibits peaceful interactions
- Military supremacy — is eco-costly, mentally and physically damaging, not peaceful
- Patriarchy — admires eco-costly wealth, and increases power inequality
- GDP Growth Economics — drives environmental damage (I=PAT)
- Nationalism -weakens collective responsibility for the Commons
- Pronatalism — disregards the carrying capacity of Earth
All these behaviours are unwise during global ecosystems collapse. These are deeply entrenched behaviours and they are often reinforced by social media, mainstream media, and formal education. They can all be characterised as a ‘fluency’ response from the human limbic system. This means that our critical thinking gets by-passed in favour of these business-as-usual behaviours. This is why Lovelock rightly suspected that we might be unable to stop ourselves engineering our own extinction.
There is a book by Si Alhir (Sinan Si Alhir) called ‘Primal Patterning: Surviving and Thriving Inside Modernity’. It helps people to navigate past the entrenched business-as-usual ideology that I describe later in this article. I am currently reading the draft of his next book. It is rather challenging to assimilate, but I feel confident that the ideas might serve a key role to help managers and leaders to navigate past the limbic response system that usually prevents us from considering making profound changes in our behaviour patterns.
We cannot begin to correct our ecocidal direction until we work together to challenge all of these ecocidal behaviour patterns. We are in a Moloch trap. A profound mindset shift is required to extricate ourselves. The remainder of this article offers a roadmap to navigate that mindset shift.
Wiser Behaviours are Emerging — they need help
There are eco-friendly behaviour patterns that could replace all these entrenched ecocidal habits. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Colonial oppression gets replaced by Place-based Stewardship
Israel demonstrates that colonialism and oppression is behaviour that is still admired and defended by many. We could demonstrate a global rejection of the colonial mindset by merging Israel and occupied Palestine into a single state called Palestine in which all citizens would enjoy equal rights. Israel operates at seventeen times the biocapacity available within its borders. The Zionist concept that a small area of land could ever be home to every Jew in the diaspora was never ecologically feasible. We must all let go of the Zionist ideology, it has done all of humanity a great disservice. Likewise, we must let go of the name ‘Israel’.
Military Supremacy is replaced by Mutual Security
Military expenditure is the practice of spending money to cause environmental harm and mental and physical harm to humans. Therefore, if we genuinely wish to heal Gaia, there is no justification for any military expenditure. Note that the harm that is done to humans during any military operation applies both to those controlling the weapons and those in the firing line. We could redirect this entire aspect of our human enterprise into building a global safety net that ensures everyone has basic provisions and shelter. This shift offers a shared purpose that will build trust on a global scale. The new social contract suggested by Consilium Dignitatis would be a helpful concept to begin to facilitate this aspiration.
Patriarchy gets replaced by Relational Leadership
The wealth and power hierarchy, patriarchy, might be more aptly named the Eco-destruction Hierarchy. Gender inequality can be considered as one facet of this ever expanding power inequality pyramid. Relational leadership is a people-centered management approach that prioritizes human connection, trust, and collaboration over rigid hierarchy and task control. The core components of this emergent model are inclusivity, empowerment, purpose, ethics, and a strong focus on the relational process. Some ideas that would help this aspect of shift:
- Limitarianism — Ingrid Robeyns suggests a wealth cap at about ten million US Dollars
- Fair Start Movement — argues that birth equity is the foundation upon which every conversation about justice, democracy, human rights, sustainability, and accountability ultimately rests.
- Truth Alliance — restoring equity, addressing historic injustices
- The work by Alaka Oluwatobi offers many new perspectives on co-authorship of power in a post-sovereignity world.
Growth Economics gets replaced by GDP Downsizing
Governments need to recognise their obligations to protect present and future generations from foreseeable environmental harm. This article from Debunk’Onomy describes why our debt-based monetary system is an encouragement to destroy Earth’s ecosystems, and describes his alternative NEMO IMS.
The mainstream Degrowth movement have worked with traditional economists to offer a Roadmap for a New Economy to Eradicate Poverty. The ideas in this roadmap are all helpful, but maximum mitigation will require us to imagine beyond these ideas. Our main challenge is not poverty, it is avoiding starvation and lack of potable water; because in ecosystems collapse no amount of money can continue to buy these precious essentials.
The I=PAT insights from environmental science imply that shrinking the global economy would undoubtedly ease up the pressure on the collapsing ecosystems. Therefore, instead of debating whether we can decouple GDP growth from environmental harm, it would be a wiser strategy to simply use GDP as a measure of ecological harm, and work together to shrink global GDP in a manner that minimises suffering to all life forms.
Abandoning aspirations to exert military supremacy over others would be an easy first step in that direction. Our entire military budget is founded on the paranoia that is encouraged by the rich and powerful to facilitate the ‘divide and rule’ principle. For Gaia to heal, we must recognise that all of life on Earth is interconnected and interdependent.
Nationalism gets replaced by Bioregional Identity
Protecting the Commons is a global survival requirement that crosses National borders. Regenerative agriculture relies on bioregions being restored or kept intact.
A Global Aspiration for Eco-equity would addresses the flaw in our human rights declaration. We cannot deliver Human Rights unless we successfully protect the commons. The suggested wording describes an aspiration to voluntarily and fairly downsize the global economy until we return within the carrying capacity of Earth. To successfully work towards this aspiration will require global sharing of skills and resources in a mutually beneficial way. Becoming isolationist in the way that the USA is attempting with ‘America First’, is not a helpful mindset to prepare us to rise this challenge.
Pronatalism gets replaced by Eco-aware family planning
There will undoubtedly be demographic challenges arising from facilitating a global campaign to encourage eco-aware family planning. We need to rise to that challenge for the sake of future generations. Minimal birth rates will help to minimise suffering for both parents and children in the current context of escalating ecosystems collapse. EarthOvershoot offers data on the sustainable population by country. The Life Map Foundation is working to coordinate different data sources to provide a great deal of ecological data at a more detailed level.
Eco-costly longevity gets replaced by Eco-aware quality of life
It is important that we accept that death is essential for new life to flourish. The ecological cost of modern healthcare in the UK is discussed in chapters 7, 8, and 10 of the free book Saving Us From Ourselves.
Reflections of a Paradigm Shifter
An earlier article ‘Envisioning Eco-equity’, tries to envision how this cultural shift might emerge in the UK. A key step involves raising public awareness. The UK National Emergency Briefing has galvanised a gallant nation-wide attempt to do what the UK government has categorically failed to address. There are thousands of People’s Emergency Briefings occurring all over Britain as a result of their initiative. Sadly, there is nothing in these briefings about the cultural shift that is described in this article.
Create more to consume more — is this wise?
During an East meets West interview discussing climate change, Acharya Prashant captures our modern day growth economics mindset into a simple slogan: ‘Create more people to consume more stuff’ (at 11 mins in). Prashant tackles the toxic psychology that makes role models of the people who emit the most emissions (ref. 13:30 Are we really suicidal?).
We need a new slogan to steer us into a wiser path. Perhaps ‘Shrink and Share’ could replace the ‘Grab and Grow’ mentality that got us into this pickle. According to recent research we need to shrink our population and economic throughput by about 75% to achieve genuine sustainability. Most of the sustainability and Degrowth movement still exhibits denial about the gravity of our predicament. Therefore, delusion and hypocrisy are still available in abundance. They are probably our most abundant resources right now.
Diversity and Historical Injustice
Global human society is rich in diverse cultures that reflect the diversity of Earth’s surface. The well-being of any individual human is increasingly dependent on where they are located and the financial wealth of their parents. This means that a child’s well-being is increasingly dependent on the history of their parents and country. On top of that fundamental injustice, comes the increasingly grim existential reality of the escalating ecosystems collapse.
If you are unconvinced about global ecosystems collapse. Below is a list of references to evidence of global ecosystems collapse.
• Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 2019
• Living Planet Report 2024 | WWF — reads more like a dying planet report
Historical Injustice from GDP growth
Most financially wealthy countries have become wealthy by over-exploiting natural resources and by coercing other countries into financial debt. The insights from I=PAT inform us that the wealthier countries will have inflicted more ecological damage than poorer countries in the process of growing their GDP.
Both financial wealth and debt correlate to ecological damage. When money is loaned, that money is usually used in ecologically damaging ways. Building infrastructure destroys natural habitats and diminishes biodiversity. All infrastructure development comes with an ecological cost. The Sustainable Development Goals have been conceived within an ecocidal socio-economic model that ignores the biophysical limits of Earth. They are worthy goals, but they are framed in a way that will increase environmental damage.
The SDGs are an example of how we ignore the biophysical limits of Earth when we aspire to achieve equity. There is no recognition of the need to minimise further damage to the environment whilst we work towards repaying historical injustice. If we do not teach and facilitate eco-aware family planning whilst we engage in efforts to lift people out of poverty, then we will just increase the number of people that suffer in the unfolding mass extinction event. There are demographic models that predict imminent population collapse if we continue with business as usual. The image below is from the Bystroff World 4.5 demographic model. The lowest line represents business-as-usual (BAU).
To minimise ecological damage going forwards it will help to minimise infrastructure development in the less developed countries. If less developed countries are willing to help to minimise ecological damage in this way they must receive appropriate recompense.
The Existential Reality
Humanity has been in chronic global ecological overshoot since the 1970’s. Recent research estimates that a sustainable human population would be about 70% smaller than the 8 billion of today. About 2.3 billion people faced food insecurity in 2025. Seven of the nine planetary boundaries have been breached. Data on insect decline indicates that the Sixth Mass extinction has been underway for at least a century. Climate breakdown is just one symptom of global ecosystems collapse.
In 2022 the Human Rights Council resolution 48/13 unequivocally recognised the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for all people. This ‘right’ is not being met for anyone right now, this failure will persist until we repay the global ecological debt.
The Mainstream Degrowth Movement
I have debated and evolved my ideas over several years partly with the help of a local Oxfordshire businessman. He is a very clever man, but deeply trapped in the arrogant belief that humans are far too clever to be engineering their own extinction. He also admires Trump, and believes that powerful men should be forgiven any sexual indiscretions. Apart from these flaws, he is a nice chap who has followed my work for several years.
He recently asked who do I actually agree with? I sent this list in response: Herman Daly, E F Schumacher (Small is Beautiful), Jason Hickel (Less is More), Timothée Parrique , Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics), Yanis Varoufakis (Techno-feudalism), Clara Mattei (Escape from Capitalism), Grace Blakeley (Vulture Capitalism), Gary Stevenson (The Trading Game), Andrew Fanning , Ingrid Robeyns (Limitarianism), Hans Stegeman , Jeremy Lent (Eco-civilisation), Elinor Ostrom (The Tragedy of the Commons), Prof. Steve Keen (tells it straight), Dr Victoria Hurth (Beyond Profit).
His response provides a helpful summary of where these different voices sit within the spectrum of the paradigm shift that I can see emerging. He is quite right to point out that none of these voices fully align with my own. But full consensus is never seen on the road to a socio-economic paradigm shift of this magnitude. However, his analysis helped me to more fully understand in what ways these voices differ from each other and from my own perspective. I thought that my readers might find his comments helpful and his style entertaining. His words follow in italics.
Many thanks for your list, Barbara… Most enlightening. Of course, they are a splendid bunch of anti-neoliberals: they all agree on there being too much corrosive inequality, that ecological limits are real, and that orthodox economics has failed… But they most certainly do not agree with what to do next, and therefore most of them do not really agree with you, Barbara!
There are two big and quite separate questions: ‘how big should the economic pie be?’ and ‘who gets which slice?’
Rigid Degrowth answers the first question: aggregate material throughput must fall, in absolute terms, as a matter of deliberate policy.
But most of the names on your list are more concerned with the second question.
Only a minority are genuinely Degrowthers. Hickel and Parrique advocate planned contraction of throughput in rich countries as an explicit policy goal. Daly is the intellectual grandfather (though notably more benign than his heirs!) His steady-state economics worked through market mechanisms (cap, auction and trade) within fixed biophysical limits. Schumacher belongs in spirit, his emphasis being scale and appropriate technology rather than contraction as such. And he always seemed concerned with more ethereal philosophical concerns, about ‘rurality’ for instance. Fanning, through the Doughnut Economics Action Lab and the “living well within limits” research, completes this core group.
A second group is growth-agnostic rather than Degrowth. Raworth is studiedly neutral: economies should make us ‘thrive’ whether or not they grow, a distinction you need to overlook to claim her as your ally! Lent wants a values-led civilizational shift, compatible in mood but more culture than programme oriented. Stegeman and Hurth work through banks and businesses, an outlook Degrowthers usually dismiss as ‘greenwashing’.
NEEP, the initiative of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, is instructive: it says that growth is not the enemy, only growth as currently pursued. “Beyond growth” in this sense means ending growth-dependence in the rich world while accepting that poverty eradication in the South will require material expansion there. That is more some sort of post-growth pragmatism, than it is about contraction.
The largest group is for sure anti-capitalist but not Degrowth at all: these are the ‘slice’ people. Stevenson’s entire project is that ordinary people should have more money and more consumption, funded by taxing wealth; he would welcome handsome growth provided the gains went to wage earners rather than asset holders. (Though take him with a pinch of salt, for he sensibly took the precaution of working the system to get fairly rich!)
Robeyns’s limitarianism caps riches at the top for distributional and democratic reasons, saying nothing much about aggregate output. Blakeley and Varoufakis want democratic control of investment: redirected production, not less of it (‘technofeudalism’ is a theory about rent extraction, not about overshoot, a central ‘degrowth concept.)
Mattei (the book is The Capital Order, about austerity being ‘invented’) is positively awkward for Degrowth, since her argument is that imposed consumption discipline on ordinary people is a class weapon… which is what Degrowth’s critics level at it. Keen has genuine common ground with the biophysical wing (energy in production functions, the demolition of Nordhaus), but his politics are about intervention than about overall contraction.
Ostrom is a complete misfit, and citing her as “The Tragedy of the Commons” gets it backwards twice: Hardin wrote the essay, and Governing the Commons is her celebrated ‘practical’ denial of it. Her method (essential no overall answers) is the methodological opposite of a single global programme of managed Degrowth contraction.
Of the appended organisations, NEMO IMS brands itself as a route to Degrowth, yet proposes a maximally top-down design: global labelling of approved activities, a new exchange standard, money issued for commons regeneration. Ask about who decides all these things and how, and the proposal coughs and splutters to a halt! Consilium Dignitatis is a tax and welfare redesign: redistribution within a monetary growth economy. The Fair Start Movement concerns population and birth entitlements, which is something that mainstream Degrowth tends to shy away from, although I do accept, Barbara, that you are willing to wade into this one.
Of course to some extent the conflation of the two groups does serve both sides. The distributionists lend Degrowth their moral energy and audiences; Degrowth lends the distributionists an aura of ecological necessity, as though wealth taxes are what ‘physics’ demands. But contraction only becomes necessary if one adds an independent empirical premise: that decoupling output from throughput is impossible. That’s the Big Bit, and most of the people on the list have not signed up to it.
A simple test sorts the list: if fair and reasonable decoupling proved feasible, would this person still want the economy smaller? For Hickel and Parrique, arguably yes, since their sufficiency ethic runs deeper than the carbon arithmetic. For Stevenson, Robeyns, Blakeley, Varoufakis, Mattei and Ostrom, I’d say somewhere between probably and deffo no.
So that is roughly five of twenty who pass the test. The rest are really more of a ‘fairness coalition’, and presenting them as Degrowth buddies is a tad optimistic.